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From: bskendig@dry.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: History of Macintalk (was Re: Status of Macintalk 2.0)
Message-ID: <5152@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 10 Jan 91 03:35:31 GMT
References: <1991Jan6.183017.14640@cs.dal.ca> <91008.004541HMPQC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <1991Jan10.014721.5168@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
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In article <1991Jan10.014721.5168@Neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan J Torrie) writes:
>HMPQC@CUNYVM.BITNET writes:
>>Apple also said that MacinTalk would never be supported again (Tech Note 268)
>>but now there's version 2.0, so whom are we to believe?
>
> Can someone in the know please explain what is different between Macintalk
>1.31 and 2.0?

Now, hang on a minute, here.

Here's the story, as I know it. Way back when, when the original Macs
came out, Apple hired an independent firm to make a speech synthesizer
for them.  This synthesis program was Macintalk, and Apple didn't get
the source code for it.  (Wasn't in the deal.)

Now, Macintalk played some games with the Sound Manager that Apple
simply decided they could no longer support while still making the
Sound Manager small, fast, and powerful.  As a result, Macintalk
should stop working any day now; it's just good fortune that keeps it
from crashing your machine.  Remember, it was made back when the Mac
Plus was the top-of-the-line machine, I believe, and how much software
like that will still run and behave itself on a IIfx?

When the Mac II was introduced, Macintalk gave it some problems, so
some kind soul apparently dug around in the machine code of the
program and tinkered with some things that got it to work properly.  I
think this is what's called `1.31'; I don't believe the original had
any version number on it.  (But don't go by what numbers your copy
does or doesn't have to decide what it really is; people have been
known to fiddle with the version numbers themselves, and since there's
no such thing as an `original disk' of Macintalk to refer to...)

Macintalk has not bee upgraded.  When someone hinted that it wouldn't
work with System 7 last fall on the net, there was a great hue and
cry, and Apple engineers admitted that they simply didn't have any
source code they could look at to update the thing, and they had
neither the resources nor the interest just now to reverse-engineer it
or redo it from scratch.

As for this `2.0' version, since there's no conceivable way that Apple
could or would have updated the speech driver without someone here
knowing (unless all the Apple people here are bloody liars ;), is
probably a version `1.31' with the `vers' resource updated by someone
wishing to create a stir (and succeeding, too).

Think. If you had just finished a major update to a really neat piece
of software, would you package it woth something else shareware on a
pay-modem service and tell your employees not to greathe a word of it
in public?  :)

Of course, since I don't work for Apple, all of what I've said may be
a complete and shameful untruth based on misinformation.  But, on the
other hand, it might be correct enough to make some recruiter at Apple
say "That boy knows something!  Let's hire him and pay him dozens of
thousands of dollars every year to change the version numbers on our
System 7 stuff to `8.0'!"

Maybe?

     << Brian >>

| Brian S. Kendig      \ Macintosh |   Engineering,   | bskendig             |
| Computer Engineering |\ Thought  |  USS Enterprise  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU
| Princeton University |_\ Police  | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET         |
"It's not that I don't have the work to *do* -- I don't do the work I *have*."